User:Drewbie/Biochemistry

This book is mainly taken from the biochemistry pages of wikipedia
and then edited into a self-consistent and logical structure. Due to
the large scope of biochemistry, the topic is split between several books.

Biochemistry is the study of the chemistry of, and relating to, biological organisms. It forms a bridge between biology and chemistry by studying how complex chemical reactions and chemical structures give rise to life and life's processes. Biochemistry is sometimes viewed as a hybrid branch of organic chemistry which specializes in the chemical processes and chemical transformations that take place inside of living organisms, but the truth is that the study of biochemistry should generally be considered neither fully "biology" nor fully "chemistry" in nature. Biochemistry incorporates everything in size between a molecule and a cell and all the interactions between them.

Biochemistry essentially remains the study of the structure and function of cellular components (such as enzymes and cellular organelles) and the processes carried out both on and by organic macromolecules - especially proteins, but also carbohydrates, lipids, nucleic acids, and other biomolecules. All life forms alive today are generally believed to have descended from a single proto-biotic ancestor, which could explain why all known living things naturally have similar biochemistries. Even when it comes to matters which could appear to be arbitrary - such as the genetic code and meanings of codons, or the "handedness" of various biomolecules - it is irrefutable fact that all marine and terrestrial living things demonstrate certain unchanging patterns throughout every level of organization, from family and phylum to kingdom and clade.

Originally, it was generally believed that life was not subject to the laws of science the way non-life was. It was thought that only living beings could produce the molecules of life (from other, previously existing biomolecules). Then, in 1828, Friedrich Wöhler published a paper about the synthesis of urea, proving that organic compounds can be created artificially. The dawn of biochemistry may have been the discovery of the first enzyme, diastase (today called amylase), in 1833 by Anselme Payen. Eduard Buchner contributed the first demonstration of a complex biochemical process outside of a cell in 1896: alcoholic fermentation in cell extracts of yeast. Although the term “biochemistry” seems to have been first used in 1881, it is generally accepted that the formal coinage of biochemistry occurred in 1903 by Carl Neuber, a German chemist. Since then, biochemistry has advanced, especially since the mid-20th century, with the development of new techniques such as chromatography, X-ray diffraction, NMR spectroscopy, radioisotopic labelling, electron microscopy and molecular dynamics simulations. These techniques allowed for the discovery and detailed analysis of many molecules and metabolic pathways of the cell, such as glycolysis and the Krebs cycle (citric acid cycle).

Today, the findings of biochemistry are used in many areas, from genetics to molecular biology and from agriculture to medicine.